Vandy's Kevin Stallings realizes players improve when he's not yelling.
By BRIAN LANDMAN
Published March 25, 2004
ORLANDO - It seemed like an innocuous question about the challenges he faced in rebuilding the men's basketball program at Vanderbilt.
But Kevin Stallings didn't take it that way.
For him, it was a setup line awaiting a punchline.
"I thought you were going to say restructuring there for a second. Thank you for not saying that," he said in what was a good-natured zinger about the recent radical shakeup in who oversees athletics at the private university. (It's no longer an athletic director but a vice chancellor.)
"He's a pretty funny guy," senior forward Matt Freije said.
"He tries to make it fun for us and make sure we don't go out and play nervous," said sophomore guard Mario Moore.
Who says laughter isn't the best medicine?
Last year the Commodores were a disappointing 11-18, including 3-13 in the SEC. Stallings was known for his intensity and verbal barbs hurled at his players. Still fiery this year, he has been more conscious of keeping things looser and lighter.
The Commodores improved to 8-8 in the SEC and are 23-9, earning a trip to the Sweet 16 for the first time since 1993 with a furious comeback in the final minutes against North Carolina State on Sunday. They meet No. 2-seeded Connecticut tonight in Phoenix.
"Vanderbilt's done a great job," said Alabama coach Mark Gottfried, whose team joins the Commodores as the unexpected remaining torchbearers for the league. "They're going to be a heck of a matchup problem for whoever they play. We know them pretty well, and teams that don't know them probably don't realize how good they are."
No joke.
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It isn't easy being Vanderbilt.
The school has a stellar academic reputation and tradition. SAT scores for most incoming freshmen hover in the 1200s. And in athletics the graduation rates are among the best in sports. Still, last fall, chancellor Gordon Gee announced a restructuring that would put athletics under the auspices of the central university administration.
"It's one of the few schools in a major conference, and I want this to sound the way it needs to sound, that's in the big time and really has its head on straight about the relationship between athletics and academics," said C.M. Newton, a former Vanderbilt coach (he took the team to the 1988 Sweet 16) and ex-Kentucky athletic director who serves as special consultant to the SEC. "The only downside is it's not a national, private university such as Stanford or Duke. It's a regional university."
Stallings, in his fifth year at Vanderbilt after six years as coach at Illinois State, said that means a smaller recruiting pool than his SEC rivals.
"We have challenges, but there are very, very few easy jobs," he said. "I was an assistant at the University of Kansas for five years, and that was not easy. Roy (Williams) made it look easy over the course of time, but it wasn't easy. You had to go lots of other places to get players."
Just three active players are from Tennessee, including two from Nashville - Moore, a star in Vanderbilt's 71-58 win over Western Michigan in the opening round with a career-high 26 points, and sophomore forward Julian Terrell, a key reserve.
Freije, the school's all-time leader scorer, is from Kansas, senior guard Russell Lakey is from Los Angeles and 7-2 junior center Dawid Przybyszewski is from Poland.
"Hopefully," Stallings said, "we're showing signs now that our program has been able to be effec tive in that more limited, but attractive, recruiting pool."
* * *
Like all coaches, Stallings, 43, tries every day to motivate players and convince them to accept roles. Last year he probably was too harsh, and some players stopped paying attention.
Vanderbilt lost 10 of its past 11.
"I think No.1, he has gotten a little softer approach," said North Carolina coach Roy Williams, whom Stallings credits along with Gene Keady (his college coach and first boss) and his high school coach as major influences.
"He's a very bright young man and he's seen something over the last couple of years that he felt like didn't help his team, and he's been willing to make changes to help his team. To me, that only says great things about Kevin."
"This year he's getting players to do things he wants them to do, and he's going about it in a good way," Freije said. "He doesn't yell a lot this year. He's been pretty mellow at practice, and guys respond to that. We've practiced hard and we've played hard."
"College basketball is meant to be fun," Stallings said. "I think you keep their attention better if they have something to laugh about. I think you keep their attention better if you're not always just driving them for a single purpose. ... They have an understanding of what is okay and what is not okay. They make it easy."
